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* E-mail: caterina.rohde@arcor.de # E-mail: tkach@cisr.ru This Special Issue comprises six articles to explore how au pairs position themselves in their receiving societies in the context of migration and domesticities. In diversified societies, au pairs negotiate between their own aspirations and the existing immigration and employment opportunities. At the micro-level of intercultural encounters with their host families and outer communities, au pairs perform and maintain their identity. While becoming an au pair, young migrants self-position themselves toward their host families and later they reflect upon their social, ethnical and cultural belonging to the hosting society. Traditionally, the au pair scheme is a European mobility form that has been predominantly used by young women as a developmental phase in their early adulthood. The French term ‘au pair’ means ‘at par’, ‘at equal shares’ or ‘on mutual terms’. This corresponds with the ideal that in the au pair relationship, both parties – families and au pairs – should benefit. The so-called ‘Welschlandjahr’ is considered as one of the early examples of former forms of au pairing. Around the middle of the 19th century, young German speaking women in Switzerland went to live with French speaking Swiss families in order to prepare for the role of a housewife, while also learning French (Orthofer 2009: 113). Approximately at the same time, the term ‘au pair’ established itself in France denoting the stay of young English women from the wealthy middle classes in French families to learn French and teach the children of the family English language (Caudera-Preil 2001). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, au pairs existed in the form of domestic labour. The European (mostly Swedish, German, Austrian and Danish) girls came to Britain to work as domestic helps based on informal exchanges and individual agreements. This practice continued in the interwar and post-war periods (Liarou 2015: 21). The 1969 ‘European Agreement on Au Pair Placement’ drafted by the Council of Europe formalised what had already been an informal practice for several decades. This document defined the regulatory frameworks of a Europe-wide (lately, worldwide) form of international mobility for young people in their (early) twenties, both male and female. In theory, the au pair placement provides an opportunity for young people to learn language and culture abroad, while temporarily (1-2 years) living as a ‘member’ of a host family and providing light domestic work and childcare for this family. In turn, the host families provide au pairs with pocket money (not salary) and cover their language training. The au pair stay is officially defined as a cultural exchange program, thus au pairs are legally not granted the status of migrants, workers or students. Unlike many migration statuses, such as educational, labour or marriage migration, au pair placement is a blurry category. The official definition of the au pair stay incorporates national au pair regulations and migratory policies. On top of that, the situation of au pairs is impacted by care and gender regimes, public attitudes towards newcomers from certain countries, a set of social opportunities provided for newcomers at a local level, as well as the au pair’s relationship with the host family. The lack of monitoring and supervision of au pair stays, as well as the poor definition of au pairs’ rights, usually leads to numerous cases of abuse of the scheme, exploitation and various forms of harassment of au pairs. In their current analyses, social scientists and practitioners evaluate the legitimacy of the scheme, in terms of the extent to which it fits the political and public norms of the receiving society. They warn that the initial idea of au pair placement as cultural exchange program has been distorted and either the careful restoration of the original program is necessary, or an official transition to the employment contract of a domestic worker should be implemented (e.g., Øien 2009; Bikova 2010; Sollund 2010; Widding Isaksen 2010; Widding Isaksen & Stenum 2011; Moss 2015; Løvdal 2015; Smith 2015). A previous research about the au pair stay has shed light on different aspects of this phenomenon. Firstly, au pairing has been studied as a migration process, secondly, it has been investigated as a form of domestic and care work, and thirdly, au pairing has been examined as a biographical phase of young adulthood. Received 12 June 2016; Accepted 5 September 2016

Finding Oneself Abroad: Au pairs’ strategies of self-positioning in hosting societies